Wear OS 3 has plenty of fans but no lack of doubters

Wear OS 3 breathes life into Google’s ailing smartwatch operating system. The new OS, developed alongside Samsung, remains a Galaxy Watch 4 exclusive for the time being. Now that the device has been out for a few months, what do you make of the OS?

We posed this question in a recent poll, and the results are now in.

How do you like Wear OS 3?

Results

This was another wildly popular pol, tipping the 3,000 votes tallied mark since it was published on October 14. It’s clear that readers have plenty to say about Wear OS 3. But judging by the share of the vote, those sentiments are hardly negative.

More than a third of voters claim that they “love” the OS and have no complaints, while 27.3% say they “like it.” In total, more than 60% of respondents on this poll like Wear OS 3 to some degree. Considering the majority of readers also want their next smartwatch to run Wear OS 3, we’d chalk that up as a victory for Google and Samsung.

Wear OS 3 isn’t short of doubters, though. 32% of respondents are still on the fence, claiming that they like some things but would change others. That said, only a tiny percentage of users either don’t like Wear OS 3 or hate it entirely. In total, 7.6% of respondents fall into these two camps.

Your comments

• goducks3620: It’s not really been released yet, so it’s hard to say. The Tizen/WearOS3 hybrid looks more Tizen than Wear OS. Google hasn’t fixed the Google Assistant on existing Wear OS for over a year — you can’t use it to send texts or call people or a host of other things — pretty essential features on a watch. So a fail until that is resolved. You should write an article about that.
• Pookiedacat: Hi honestly, I own a GW4 Classic, 42 mm. I used to own a GW3 which was the last of the Great Tizen watches. That watch had a clear direction, this watch is still looking for one.
• Elwood: I just returned the only Wear OS 3 device available. Samsung sucks and that watch sucked too. Never got it to connect to Verizon after Samsung sent me a replacement device, Verizon said everything is good to go on their end… Samsung didn’t have a clue. The required extra app fires off notification errors all day long, reset my phone (OnePlus 9), and watch about a bazillion times. I’m sure everyone that says wear os 3 is good is used to Samsung’s UI and I’m sure it does work a whole lot better with a Samsung phone but believe the reviews it is terrible for other phone manufacturers. I’m 48hr in with a fossil gen 6, everything works so far and it is definitely better than the gen 5 but I’m not wowed or anything. One thing I noticed immediately is the quick settings can’t be swiped in wear os 2 (they can in 3) so that’s one part of the base os that will be great for non-Samsung watches. But…I have had significantly less irritating experiences than with the Galaxy Watch 4.
• roaduardo: I get the feeling this won’t make the big improvements we’ve been craving for smartwatch OS on Android. Samsung will continue to improve their flavor for their watches that work best with only their phones. Google will try stuff to make wear os3 not suck on other watches. In the end, Samsung’s implementation will still be best and still only be best whilst using their phones. Too many chefs in the kitchen. Android, in general, continues to be a fragmented mess.

That’s it for this poll. Thanks for your votes and comments. Drop a comment below if you have any thoughts about the results or Wear OS 3 in general.